Witness: 50 burn to death in Kenya church--Mob attack building where hundreds had taken refuge from violence

NAIROBI, Kenya -

A mob torched a church sheltering hundreds of Kenyans fleeing election violence on Tuesday, killing as many as 50 people as the convulsion of bloodshed continued after the disputed vote that gave the president a second term. The opposition leader accused the government of "genocide."

President Mwai Kibaki said political parties should meet immediately and publicly call for calm after rioting killed at least 263 people in what had been east Africa's most stable and prosperous democracy.
Most of Kibaki's cabinet lost their seats in parliament, where Odinga's party took the majority of the seats. The discrepancy between the parliamentary and presidential results, unexplained delays in vote tallying and anomalies that included a 115-percent turnout in one constituency have fueled allegations of rigging. After the results were announced, the government instituted a ban on live broadcasts and many media outlets suspended their news programs in protest, allowing wild rumors to flourish.

The bloodshed is a stunning turn of events in one of the most developed countries in Africa, with a booming tourism industry and one of the continent's highest growth rates.

Kibaki's supporters say he has turned Kenya's economy into an east African powerhouse, with an average growth rate of 5 percent. He won by a landslide in 2002, ending 24 years in power by the notoriously corrupt Daniel arap Moi. But Kibaki's anti-graft campaign has been seen as a failure, and the country still struggles with tribalism and poverty.

Odinga, a flamboyant 62-year-old with a son named Fidel Castro, cast himself as a champion of the poor. His main constituency is Kibera, where some 700,000 people live in breathtaking poverty, but he has been accused of failing to do enough to help them in 15 years as a member of parliament.